Data Routing
Rather than Databases: The Meaning of the Next Wave
of the Web Revolution to Data
Management

ABSTRACT

What is going to be
as important in the next 20 years as relational
databases were in the prior 20 years is the
management of self-describing extensible messages.
The net is undergoing a profound change as it moves
from an entirely pull-oriented model into a push
model. This latter model is far more biological in
nature with an increasing amount of information
flowing asynchronously through the system to form
an InformationBus. The key challenges for the next
20 years will be storing, routing, querying,
filtering, managing, and interacting with this bus
in a manner that doesn't lead to total systems
degradation. Predictive intelligent filtering and
rules engines will become more important than
querying.

Driving factors for
this revolution will be the need for push for
portable devices due to their poor latency and
intermittent communication, an increasing demand
for timely information on fully connected devices,
a huge rise in application to application
integration through asynchronous messaging based on
web services and a concomitant requirement for an
entirely new type of message broker, and an
increasing desire for intelligent agents to cope
with information overload as all information
becomes available all the time. The key enabling
technology will be XML messages and the various
technologies that will develop for handling XML
ranging from transformation to compression to
indexing to storage to programming
languages.

ABOUT THE
SPEAKER

As VP of
Engineering for BEA's Framework Division, Adam
drives the strategic and technical directions for
BEA's WebLogic Workshop, WebLogic Integration, and
WebLogic Portal products. Before joining BEA, Adam
co-founded Crossgain, a software development firm
acquired by BEA in 2001. Adam is widely recognized
as a pioneer and key figure in the evolution of
XML. Prior to Crossgain, Adam was a senior manager
at Microsoft where he drove the company's entire
XML program from 1997 through 1999. He was then
named general manager of Microsoft's WebData
organization, a team focused on refining the
company's long-term XML strategy. While at
Microsoft, he was also responsible for designing
and delivering the Microsoft Access PC Database
product, and he managed the development of the HTML
engine used in Internet Explorer 4 and Internet
Explorer 5.

KEYNOTE 2: WEDNESDAY, 21 AUGUST
2002, 09:00-10:30

Foundation
Matters

ABSTRACT

This talk is meant
as a wake-up call The foundation of the
database field is, of course, the relational
model. Sad to say, however, there are some in
the database community--certainly in industry, and
to some extent in academia also--who do not seem to
be as familiar with that model as they ought to be;
there are others who seem to think it is not very
interesting or relevant to the day-to-day business
of earning a living; and there are still others who
seem to think all of the foundation-level problems
have been solved. Indeed, there seems to be a
widespread feeling that "the world has moved on,"
so to speak, and the relational model as such is
somehow passé. In my opinion, nothing
could be further from the truth! In this talk, I
want to sketch the results of some of my own
investigations into database foundations over the
past twenty years or so; my aim is to convey some
of the excitement and abiding interest that is
still to be found in those investigations, with a
view--I hope--to inspiring others in the field to
become involved in such activities.

Almost all of the
ideas I will be covering either are part of, or
else build on top of, The Third Manifesto,
which is a detailed proposal for the future
direction of data and DBMSs. Like Codd's original
papers on the relational model, it can be seen as
an abstract blueprint for the design of a DBMS and
the language interface to such a DBMS. Among many
other things:

It shows that
the relational model--and I do mean the
relational model, not SQL--is a necessary and
sufficient foundation on which to build
"object/relational" DBMSs (sometimes called
universal servers).

It also points
out certain blunders that can unfortunately be
observed in some of today's products (not to
mention the SQL:1999 standard).

And it explores
in depth the idea that a relational database,
along with the relational operators, is really a
logical system and shows how that idea
leads to a solution to the view updating
problem, among other things.

ABOUT THE
SPEAKER

C.J. Date is an
independent author, lecturer, researcher and
consultant, specializing in relational database
technology. He was one of the first people anywhere
to recognize the significance of Codd's pioneering
work on the relational model, and has done more
than anyone else to make that work accessible to
others. Before leaving IBM in 1983, he was involved
in technical planning and design for the IBM
products SQL/DS and DB2. His book An
Introduction to Database Systems (7th edition,
2000) is the standard text on the subject; it has
sold over 650,000 copies and is used by several
hundred colleges and universities worldwide. He is
also author or coauthor of some 30 other books on
database management, including (with Hugh Darwen)
A Guide to the SQL Standard (4th edition,
1997) and Foundation for Future Database
Systems: The Third Manifesto (2nd edition,
2000). He holds an MA Degree in Mathematics from
Cambridge University, England (1966) and the
honorary degree of Doctor of Technology from De
Montfort University, England (1994).